So is the ceasing to write rather than print an American thing? I’m Canadian, and yeah, I use my computer a lot (and type much more quickly than I write), but anything I do with pen in hand is almost exclusively writing. For example, if I’m in a meeting and I take some notes for myself it is writing. And I have to say that I’ve never noticed anything other than most of my co-workers writing as well. There are a few who I’ve noticed who print, but very few. And whether this is a gender-related or not, I seem to recall that any of those few are men.
I remember being taught D’Nealian cursive in third grade, back in the mid-'80s. It was noticably less flowery (for lack of a better word) than the cursive written by my parents and grandparents.
We were given two reasons for using cursive: first, it was faster to write, since the letters were connected. They were right about that, but it also came out looking far less legible when most students attempted it.
The second, as others have mentioned, was that we’d have to know it to succeed in college or even high school. That one turned out to be a bald-faced lie. By the time sixth grade rolled around, none of the teachers seemed to care about enforcing cursive writing at all.
The only thing that I, as a lazy student, liked about cursive was that it was much easier to stretch out when written assignments called for a specific number of pages. I made a game of that - seeing how few letters I could fit on a line without being called on it. By the time a teacher finally said something to me, I was regularly stretching out three-letter words to fill entire lines. 
I use script all the time. I enjoy forming the letters well. I like how it looks. I like the idea that I have a letter-quality printer at the end of my arm. It amuses me to be carrying on an old tradition.
In class, I write in block when I want to make what I am writing obvious. When I want the class to pay special attention and figure out what I am writing, I use script.
I did use cursive a lot, but I started modifying my handwriting in college, and by the time I graduated I wasn’t using it at all. As a result, my handwriting is really nice when I want it to be. When I’m taking notes during an interview, I don’t want it to be, and I don’t have time for artwork then anyway.
Canadian here. I also haven’t used cursive since grade school in the 80’s. But it doesn’t look like it’s as dead here as the USA. I’d say more like 50/50.
Canadian female here. I used cursive pretty much exclusively until I hit university. Then, because taking notes in class put a premium on speed, I found after some trial and error that I could write fastest using sort of a hybrid print/cursive - most of my letter forms are closer to printing than cursive, but a fair number of letters join up when it seems logical to do so.
I think it’s an important step to learning about all the variations in handwriting - it’s the first introduction of something other than typeset materials or printed letters. As far as the grading and crap that goes on in elementary school? That happens with lots of things in elementary school.
I use cursive handwriting quite a bit. I often handwrite several pages a day and legibility is a concern. A mixture of printed caps and cursive lower-case letters is fastest and least tiring.
Then again, I can still write the d’Nealian cursive and printed alphabets if necessary - I did charts and stuff for a kindergarten for a while. Maybe I just like the written word enough to enjoy it’s many variations.
Just try to read cursive writing in another language! Ouch. Hard as heck to read my wife’s private diary (especially after having to pick the lock). Darn Czechs!
I just barely managed to remember the alphabet…and I think I got Q and G wrong. Never use it, just my signature, and that is just a scribble these days.
-Tcat
I use cursive all the time. Every day. I have to fill out sales slips at work, and they are 4-layer NCR paper, but I’m legibile even on the last layer. I also have to write out tons of estimates and plans. I used to print in all caps, but I found that my legibility and speed improved when I switched to cursive.
But then again, I’ve been honing my cursive handwriting for 25 years. Back in third grade when we learned it, the teachers would fawn all over the girls who could do it well. I couldn’t. And I was jealous and felt bad about myself. I’ve been working on it ever since.
Legibility is the most important thing. My brother had small-motor control problems, and basically could barely write for years. He had some therapy for it, and was able to develop a legible, if ugly, handwriting.* I’m four years younger, so I observed and absorbed the “legibility is the most important thing” lesson. Also, my dad was a CPA and always stressed the need for legibility. And he had the coolest, most unique handwriting I’ve ever seen. I asked him about it one day, and it turns out that he had the same trouble with handwriting as my brother did! But given that it was decades before, they didn’t have the same type of therapy. But as HIS dad was a CPA, he was taught that legibility was very important. So he developed his own style of handwriting that worked for him.
I guess handwriting looms a little larger for me than most people.
On a positive note, I have slayed my third-grade demons, and now have a very nice-looking and legible cursive handwriting. I get compliments on it all the time. If I put some effort into it, I can make it look really great. And I enjoy it, too. I enjoy making a “to do” list and having it be beautiful.
In summary, cursive handwriting is important to me, but I don’t think it’s important overall. I agree that there is little need for an adult to use it nowadays. I don’t “need” to use it. I enjoy using it. I could just as well print.
But I do think it should be taught. It is an important hand skill, and hand skills are important. I also think kids should be taught to draw properly. And I think physical education class should actually involve teaching skills. But that’s a whole 'nother topic.
- My brother’s signature is not in cursive. He’s occasionally been told that it’s not a legitimate signature because it’s printed. So there is a myth out there about signatures being in cursive.
I had to actually physically write a check not so long ago…my hands cramped up at just that. It looked like I was recovering from a head injury or something.
This from a girl that has hand written reams and reams and reams of notebooks of stories.
I thank the Flying Spagetti Monster, I love computers and keyboards.
After elementary school, I didn’t use cursive again until I took the SAT my junior year and they made us copy a paragraph about that we didn’t cheat. I was taking the test at a Catholic school because my school didn’t offer it that day, and while everyone else in the room wrote fast and got back to the test, I sat there like a four-year-old trying to remember what to do with my pencil. I finally sort of made something up that almost looked right.
Some points:
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A lot of people are using the words “print” and “cursive” as if they refer to one and only one style of script. It’s not true. Children throughout history and around the world have been taught a variety of scripts under the label of “handwriting.” Even the script taught in American schools has not stayed exactly the same over the decades.
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In many American schools, children are first taught “print” (really, it’s not printing in the strict sense, but rather a balls-and-sticks script) and then “cursive” (the Copperplate-based instructional script). In my view, there is absolutely no reason to make this distinction. Children need be taught only one. In my view, the balls-and-sticks approach should be skipped and children should be taught to go straight to a basic Italic letterform based on ovals. In such a form, the individual writer can choose whether to link or not and it can form the basis of multiple individual variations. The Copperplate-based script that is taught is really little more than a guarantee of ugly handwriting on the part of most people.
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I’m puzzled by the view that people seem to have here that everyone is abandoning “cursive” for “printing.” Take a close look at the way people write. There are endless variations; no two people’s handwriting is exactly the same. Some people link up all their letters; some link up none; most are somewhere in between. They’re not printing - most of them have come up with their own distinctive handwriting based on the basic Latin letterforms, but not based on the Copperplate script.
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There is no reason why “cursive” script, when written well, should be undecipherable to our descendants.
Of course, they do. But why would people decide on their own to write like typewriters if they haven’t been accustomed to it?
I actually thought about ithis while writing my first post. Cyrillic cursive looks to me like an unending serie of pointy things connected together.
In the USA people have been adapting to the more common, more legible Print rather than script from what I have observed.
The other side part is few people write anymore. Writing is for quick notes. Most things are now done on the computer. This is leading further away from cursive being used or seen.
Letter Writing has been a dying art since the invention of the telephone and Email is really killing it, as even the older generation would rather Email than write letters.
Jim
Yes. But I needed a previous post stating that american kids are taught to write both, and taught print first to understand the situation. I’m sure that many handwritings over here (including my own) would be more legible in print (though everybody being accustomed to read cursive, maybe it’s less of an issue for us). But we’ve never been taught to write this way.
I noticed several posts in this thread that made me wonder about this. Are we really already in a situation where a lot of people aren’t accustomed anymore to write to the point it could be become an issue for otherwise litterate people? Am I becoming that old?
Whe think about it, there’s an exception. Capital letters are essentially always written in “print”, and essentially never in the flowery way they’re supposed to be in cursive.
Not sure if your trying to whoosh me, or be contrary, here, but I’ll give you a serious answer. The cursive handwriting in question was very neat & legible, so it wasn’t difficult to read, in & of itself. The girl told me she couldn’t read it, and she told me that the reason she couldn’t read it was that they didn’t teach it in school any more. I don’t go to primary school any more myself, and don’t have children, so I’m just taking her word for it on this.
I haven’t used cursive since second grade. I even print my name for my signature. I have been told by people that it isn’t a legal signature because it is printed, but I figure that if other people can have signatures that look like heart monitor screens in the hospital I can have one where you can actually read my name.
Left hander here.
I absolutely hated cursive, and my teachers hated my version of it. My letters slanted every which way. I used to get terrible marks for my terrible marks. 
Late in life I discovered that I could write (somewhat slowly) right handed, and that it’s much more natural to form cursive script with my right hand.